Cats' nonconference home schedule not paying offÂ
Arizona’s basketball season ticket holders last week were reminded that May 1 is the deadline to renew for the 2016-17 season.
So let’s say you have two seats in Section 16, opposite the Arizona bench, maybe 25 rows from the court. You must send $330 now for a yearly priority seating tax to reserve your seats. In September, you will pay $1,150 for the actual tickets. That’s roughly $1,500 for you and your wife to watch Sean Miller’s eighth Arizona team.
That’s life in the fast lane of college basketball.
But one thing has changed dramatically. Arizona’s home schedule has diminished with such suddenness that you wonder if you’re reading ASU’s schedule.
Arizona’s 2016-17 nonconference home schedule does not include a weekend game. All are played Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The five teams on the schedule are Cal State Bakersfield, Texas Southern, UC Irvine, Grand Canyon and New Mexico. Yes, Arizona is to play a rematch with Gonzaga, but it will be staged in downtown Los Angeles, of all places.
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It’s a punch in the gut to those paying $1,500 (or much more).
There’s more: because of the Pac-12’s quirky schedule rotation, the league’s reigning power, Oregon, will not play at McKale Center next season.
The UA’s 2015-16 home schedule was its worst since 1983-84, a numbing procession of Boise States, NAUs, Pacifics and Bradleys. Next year’s is worse.
A name opponent won’t play in Tucson again until UConn arrives in December of 2017. Teams like UConn used to play at McKale Center every year. Sometimes two and three teams like UConn.
Unfortunately, this is much more than an Arizona problem in college basketball. Kansas’ top home nonconference opponent this season was Montana. Duke played Indiana at home, but thereafter no one better than Utah State. North Carolina had a home game against Maryland, but otherwise lined up the Sisters of the Poor.
ASU, much like Arizona, has sold out for made-for-TV events. Arizona will play its top opponents in Hawaii, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. ASU plays its premium 2016-17 opponents in Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and New York City.
Arizona built its basketball brand and reputation on playing everyone from Duke to Kansas at McKale Center, and then returning those games in hostile road arenas year after year for 30 years.
It also built an industrial-strength RPI that never had Lute Olson worrying about a bad seed on Selection Sunday.
Now the school says top teams, and those removed from the region, are reluctant to play in Tucson.
The Wildcats still have an opening (or two) for a nonconference game at McKale. Those who support the team financially deserve for that opponent to be someone like Purdue or Oklahoma, and not, as the trend has become, Houston Baptist or IUPUI.
